The Complete Double Dead

It's zombies vs. vampires vs. bad guys vs. food in this tale of horror from start to finish! Mr. Wendig does an excellent job capturing and sustaining the reader's attention. When it comes to irony Wendig piles it on from scene to scene whether it's a Winnabago or Walmart in either case, it's blood, brains and complete mayhem. Lots of twists and turns keep the reader turning page after page wondering if this is the moment when the vampire gets it.

J. W. Coburn is just an ordinary vampire trying to eke out a living sucking anything with blood. Sadly, uninfected people (or non-zombies) are in short supply in this new world in which Coburn woke up. It's even surreal at times when he becomes a shepherd of zombie-free people. The deal is they provide him with blood; he in turn, protects them from all predators. Neither side is comfortable with the deal, but it works: barely.

If it hadn't been for Kayla, her dad (Gil), and the rest of their group would not have survived the first night after meeting Coburn. In fact, most people don't survive after meeting him. But who could resist him and Creampuff (his little dog) after meeting Kayla. Their goal is to get to the west coast to find a safe place to live. Along the way they meet cannibals, gangs, and zombies, other vampire(s).

This book is a compilation of one book, and the novella that followed. The book is strong, but there were times when I felt I was watching a repeated movie. For instance, the opening scene is eerily similar in nature to a well-known vampire movie. The irony is subtle at times and in other scenes it rains down on the reader like a ton of bricks. Warning: don't get too close to any character as nothing is sacred in this book.

Book Blurb for The Complete Double Dead

A Vampire in Zombieland.

You wouldn’t like Coburn. People don’t, as a rule; he’s not a nice man. And that’s okay, because he doesn’t like people much either. People are food. You see, Coburn’s a vampire, and has been for close on a century.

Five years ago, Coburn went to sleep – wasn’t exactly planned – and he’s just woken up to find most everybody in the world dead. And not cool, interesting dead like him; oh, no. Coburn looks basically human, and these guys... really don’t. He likes blood, and they like flesh. He’s smart; them, not so much. But they outnumber him by about a million to one, and their clotted blood cannot sustain him.

Now he’s starving, and on the run, and more pissed-off than a beestung rattlesnake. The vampire has to find blood, soon, and – like it or not – he’s gonna have to keep an eye on the frail flesh-bags he finds it in. Time for the wolf to turn shepherd.

No, Coburn doesn’t like people. But he’s gonna have to learn to.

The Complete Double Dead collects Chuck Wendig’s first novel and the follow-up novella, Bad Blood. Follow Coburn as he runs a gauntlet of supermarket cannibals, juggalos, super-zombies, and a ketamine-trip cult of zombie-worshipping New Age weirdos. It’s a road that’ll take him right back to himself, and onto the trail of his own vampiric sire. And on the way, he’ll become something entirely new.

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